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Vestibular Rehabilitation Resources

(indents by AN surgery patients)

It is my opinion that there are many other AN'ers out there who still have balance problems that would benefit from a vestibular rehab program.

The Vestibular Ear Disorder Association (Veda) is a wonderful organization full of great info for those that have balance and dizzy disorders... Well worth joining this organization... Veda has a good article called the "Balancing Act".  It is 19 pages or so, and can be ordered from them for a fee I believe.   It has many other good articles on Vestibular Rehab, balance retraining and balance literature that I found most helpful.  They have a homepage on the web, as well as a page just for vestibular rehab. Their overview of vestibular disorders is also worth reading.

Susan Herdman's book on Vestibular Rehab is the text book used by my neuro PT, and you can get a copy of it from your library or they can order it for you from a medical library.

I believe any AN'er who has not compensated to somewhat of his/her baseline balance prior to surgery should be re-evaluated in Vestibular Rehab. This can be prescribed by an ENT, Dr. of Physiotherapy, or probably any Dr. who works with balance or dizzy disorders. I also found that many Doc's are not aware that this program exists in their own PT departments. I am here to tell you...it does work, and you might want to check it out.

Here are some of the vestibular rehabilitation facilities around the country:

In the Seattle area we have Ann Shumway-Cook at Northwest Hospital who does great work and has at least one book on vestibular rehab.

I was told that Los Gatos Community Hospital had a fine vestibular rehab program.  They deal with balance issues and re-enhancing balance skills using other parts of the brain to compensate.  Los Gatos is a rather small community on the outskirts of San Jose, California.  This is a rather small facility but it does do a lot of rehabilitation work.

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Last Edited: Friday, November 01, 2002